Better to Light a Candle
by mosylu
Summary: The holidays are about being with your family, right? Well, Cisco is her family, and tonight, she wants to be with him. Killervibe fluff for Hanukkah and Christmas.


When I realized Hanukkah starts on the 24th of December this year, I knew I had to write something for Cisco and Caitlin after the Wests' Christmas Eve party. I meant this to be fluffy and then it wasn't. But, cuddles!

Thanks to saunderskendra on Tumblr for helping me brainstorm and teaching this Catholic more about Hanukkah.

* * *

 _Better to light a single candle than to curse the darkness. - Chinese Proverb_

Caitlin pulled up in front of his building. "Cisco," she said.

He didn't answer.

"Cisco," she said again. "We're here."

He stirred. "Hmmm?"

"Home. You're home."

He blinked out the window. "Oh. Yeah. Thanks."

He'd taste-tested Grandma Esther's nog, and then Grandma Millie's, and then had to test both some more. After she'd seen him trip over the step between the Wests' living room and foyer, Caitlin had taken away his keys and told him in no uncertain terms that she was driving him home.

She didn't think he was drunk all the way off his ass, but both nogs had been quite something, and Cisco had been drinking to forget. Combine that with the chilly rain that was still bucketing down (her little snow flurry had only extended a few feet from the Wests' side window) and she felt justified in being slightly tyrannical for his own good.

"Are you okay?" she asked him now.

"Sure," he said brightly. "Thanks for the ride."

He was doing what he always did, presenting a bright and shiny front to the world, but she'd seen him with tears on his face and that box in his hand, and it was hard to forget how long it had taken to convince him to shut it, or how long it had taken him to look up at her after he had.

"Really?" she asked.

"Yeah," he said, and undid his seatbelt. But he didn't reach out to open the car door.

She studied the side of his face. "Do you want me to st - "

"Yes," he said quickly. "Please? I - I don't think - " His face crumpled for a moment, then he pressed his lips together. "We can watch movies. It'll be cool."

"Sure," she said. "That sounds like a good idea."

His apartment was chilly. He fiddled with the heat until it came on with a roar. She stood awkwardly in the middle of his living room, playing with the belt of her dress coat.

He ran his hand through his hair. "Hey, I'm gonna hit the head, okay?"

"Sure," she said, and sat down on his couch. It had blankets piled up on one end. It didn't look quite long enough for Barry. A mean, cold little part of her hoped he'd been very uncomfortable for the past few weeks there. She pushed it away.

He'd gone somewhere with Iris halfway through the party, and they hadn't turned up again by the time she and Cisco had left, so she had a feeling Barry wouldn't be back here tonight. It would just be them.

When Cisco came back a long time later, she handed him a bottle of water and said, "Hydration."

In the spillover from the street lights outside, his face was very clean, as if he'd washed it. The corners of his eyes still had traces of pink. She didn't mention it.

"Cool, thanks," he said, as if there was nothing to mention. "Hey, I'll take your coat."

Instead of peeling her coat off, she said, "I found this on your fridge. Are you sure you want to stay in?"

He barely glanced at the flyer she held out. It listed Christmas Mass times from the big cathedral downtown. "No, that's nothing. Throw it away."

"Are you sure? The midnight mass starts in an hour." He'd underlined it and scribbled a note about parking.

"Yeah, I'm sure."

"Okay, but I can drive you. I don't mind."

"Caitlin, no, I'm really, really sure. I was supposed to meet my mom and my auntie's family there for midnight mass, but I - " he swallowed hard. "I can't look my mama in the eye and not tell her I saw Dante today."

She let her hand drop. "You - you know that wasn't him."

"All the more reason not to risk letting that particular cat out of the bag," he said. He took the flyer out of her hand, crumpled it up, and tossed it at the nearest garbage. It bounced off the rim and he left it where it lay. "Coat?" he said.

Since the apartment had warmed up, she peeled out of her coat and handed it over. He hung it up in the closet the way she liked, neat on its hanger. Then he shrugged out of his own coat and tossed it over the back of one of his kitchen chairs. She didn't fuss at him for not hanging it up.

They'd trained each other pretty well.

"Speaking of organized religion, when's Hanukkah start this year, anyway?" he asked.

She wasn't surprised at the question. He always got her some little thing for Hanukkah. Mostly bags of chocolate coins, which she figured he bought because she practically always shared with him. "Oh, um - tonight, actually."

"What? Seriously? And you're here with me?"

She laughed a little. "Cisco, I'm a terrible Jew. I hardly celebrate any holidays anymore. I haven't gone to synagogue since Passover."

"Yeah, but it's family time, right?"

"What am I going to do, go to my mother's house?"

"What about the Steins?"

"I'm already committed to spending tomorrow with Clarissa and Lily, eating potstickers until we explode." She waved a hand. "It's fine. I'd rather be here with you tonight, watching movies. Really, truly, I would."

He smiled a little and played with the cap of the water bottle.

 _You're family_ , she didn't say, because family was a hard topic for him, the way it had been all year, and it didn't seem like the thing to say on the evening of the day he'd been haunted by his dead brother.

On Christmas Eve.

God, it was downright Dickensian.

He drank some of the water, his brow furrowed. "That reminds me - " He went off to one of his closets and rummaged around, coming out with a cardboard box.

"You already gave me your present," she said.

"Naw, this isn't a present. I found this last year on sale, on a website, and I thought it was funny and you'd like it, so I got it, and then it got delivered and I went, 'shit, what if this is, like, insulting … ' But honestly, I just thought it was awesome and - "

"I'm not going to know whether to be insulted or amused if you don't hand it over," she told him.

He passed her the box and she pulled it open, then blinked at what was inside. "Is this a _dinosaur menorah_?"

"Velociraptor, yeah," he said. "Is it okay?"

She pressed her fingers to her mouth, but the giggle escaped. "It's completely okay. It's awesome, actually."

"Yeah?"

"Mhm." She looked at the rearing silver dinosaur, with one candle socket perched on his head and eight more marching down his spine, and giggled again. "I love it."

She never would have picked it out herself, but every time she looked at it, she would think of Cisco, and smile.

"Cool. All right. Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, all that stuff."

She ran her finger around the topmost candle socket, the one for the shamash, suddenly thoughtful. "Do you have candles? Ones that will fit this?"

"Uh, somewhere - " He blinked at her. "You wanna, um, light it up? Here? With me?"

"I can't think of a better place."

"Okay, but - " He pointed at the dinosaur. "Does that even count as a menorah that you can use without getting, like, smited by God?"

Caitlin shook her head. He was so _Catholic_ sometimes. "It's fine. It counts. Believe me, this isn't even the craziest menorah I've ever seen in my life." She pulled all the bubble wrap off it and lifted it out of the box. It was very solid, unexpectedly heavy. She positioned it in the middle of the table, so it could be seen from the window. Screw the haters, she thought defiantly. This year of all years, she was going to light her damn menorah. Even if it was a dinosaur. "Do you have those candles?"

"Oh, yeah. Nine?"

"Just two, tonight."

He brought her two skinny emergency candles, which they had to shave down with a butter knife to get them into the sockets, and a Zippo lighter so she could light the shamash. She had to look up the right prayers on her phone, and he held it up so she could read off the glowing screen, stumbling occasionally over the Hebrew.

But the flame burned calmly and steadily, all the same, and when she lifted the shamash from its socket to light the next candle down the dinosaur's spine, the wick caught without fuss.

She fitted it back into its spot and they watched the two dancing flames. She turned her head and watched Cisco for a moment, seeing shadows and light chase themselves over his face. She usually thought he looked very young, with his round cheeks and his full mouth, but tonight he looked as old as the universe, with all the sorrows of eternity in his eyes.

She touched his hand, and his fingers curled around hers for a moment, squeezing, then letting go. She turned back to the candles.

After a moment, he bumped her with his shoulder. "Hey," he mumbled. "What now?"

"That's it," she whispered back.

"Really?"

"Yep. It's not a high holy day or anything. We light the candles and pray and let them burn, and spend the rest of the night just, you know, being together." Another reason she hadn't celebrated much in the past few years, since … well. Since a lot of things.

"And you do that every night for a week?"

"Ummmm. That's the idea. But things come up. Honestly, I think I only remember once when I was a kid that we made it all eight days." She shrugged. "It's nice all the same."

He looked back at the candles. The flames flickered in his eyes. "Dante and I," he said, and had to stop to clear his throat. "Ever since we were teenagers, we've put out the luminarias for our mama. It's a thing from where she grew up in Arizona. They're these, like, paper bags? With a little candle inside, and some sand to weigh it down. You set them out along the driveway and the front walk on Christmas Eve to welcome the Christ Child."

She nodded. He'd shown her a picture of his mom's house, all lit up, a few years ago. It had been very pretty. She wondered if he remembered.

"Mom's spending tonight at my auntie's place," he said quietly. "There's not going to be luminarias at her house for the first time since before Dante was born."

She swallowed and considered her words carefully before saying, "Maybe next year?"

"Yeah," he said. "Maybe." He was quiet for a few more minutes and then said with almost brittle cheer, "So! Movies?"

She forced herself to answer in the same cheerful voice, "I'm actually kind of hungry."

"I just went shopping - you wanna cook something?"

"Like what? Latkes?"

She was joking, but he said immediately, "We can do that."

"Really?"

"Yeah, what do you need? I mean, if you want."

Wow, she actually did want latkes now. And it was something to focus on for him, because his smile looked forced and there was something almost manically peppy about his voice. "Mmmmm." She opened her recipe app and found her great-aunt's recipe. "Potatoes - "

"Check."

"Ugh, no, wait, that will take forever to peel them and grate them. Do you have frozen hash browns?"

"Yeah, that too, if Barry didn't eat them - " He checked. "Nope, still got a whole bag."

"Great, we'll be lazy. So we also need an egg, an onion, matzo meal - flour will do," she said when she caught his eye. "And oil."

He got the ingredients out, flicking on just the light over the stove so the menorah, sitting at his table in front of the window, still glowed.

He put the hash browns in the microwave to thaw as she chopped the onion. While she measured out the flour, he cracked the egg into a bowl and beat it with a fork.

"Gently," she said, "we don't need a meringue."

"Okay, Rachel Ray," he said, but set the bowl down. "What else do we need?"

"Your biggest pan, for the oil. And then the toppings, if we want to be ready to eat them right away when they're cooked."

"That is definitely something I want," he said, dropping a giant frying pan onto the stove with a clang. "What do we top it with?" he asked, glugging oil into the pan.

"That's plenty!" she said, mixing everything together with a wooden spoon. Her great-aunt had always done it with her fingers, but Caitlin had never been able to bring herself to do that. "Sour cream and applesauce, traditionally, but - "

"I got those."

She turned wide eyes on him. "You have applesauce?"

"Yeah, it looked good for some reason so I chucked some in the cart." He stuck his head in the pantry, rifling through cans and jars for a minute. "You want regular or cinnamon?"

"Regular, please." She smiled. "Maybe it was a vibe."

"Yeah, maybe. Can I do anything else?"

"Nope," she said, flicking a little water at the oil to test. It wasn't hot enough yet. "Just got to fry these and then we're ready to eat."

"Sweet!" He got out plates and utensils, then the tub of sour cream and the jar of applesauce.

She flicked more water at the oil and when it popped, she nodded. It was ready.

He hoisted himself up to sit on the clean side of the counter, working at the lid of the jar with his tongue sticking out. It popped open, and he stuck one finger in and scooped out some applesauce.

"Cisco!" she yelped.

"What?"

"What do you mean, what? That's so unsanitary."

"Look, if you're afraid of my germs, you can stick your finger in, too - " He offered her the jar.

"That's not how that works - " She caught his grin and rolled her eyes. "At least use a spoon."

He chortled, but got down two bowls and scooped one full of sour cream and the other one of applesauce before hopping back up on the counter to watch her cook, eating out of the jar. With a spoon.

When she pulled the first one out of the sizzling, popping oil and set it on a paper towel to drain, he reached out and tried to break off a piece.

"Cisco, let it cool down first!"

"Can't, smells too good - " He flapped his hand to cool it as she scooped more finished latkes out of the hot oil. She rolled her eyes and handed him a napkin, which he used to protect his hand as he picked it up and took a big bite.

"Awww, man," he mumbled, " 'as good."

"Try it with applesauce," she said, and he spooned applesauce over the next bite.

"Oh my god, better." He ate the whole thing in a few bites as she fried the second batch. "Want me to take over?" he asked. "I think I got the way you did it."

"If you want." They switched places, although she didn't sit on the counter. Instead, she ate a steaming-hot latke with sour cream while he focused on frying up the last of them. His were not quite as perfectly symmetrical as hers, but she bit her tongue and decided to be gracious because for a first attempt, they weren't so bad. And they'd taste the same.

He pulled the pan off the heat and set it aside, then loaded up both plates. "Aw yeah, time to feast."

She took the toppings and the utensils to the living room while he carried the plates, setting everything on the coffee table.

He flopped on the couch next to her. "What do you want to watch? We can go classics - _Princess Bride_ , or _Star Wars_ … or maybe thematic, like _Die Hard._ Wait, no, I got it - Rugrats Hanukkah!"

"I've actually never seen that."

He looked at her like she'd just admitted she'd never heard of the USS Enterprise. _"What."_

"Any of the show, really."

"How could you possibly miss that? It's a seminal piece of 90s pop culture!"

"I didn't watch that much TV!" And what she had been allowed to watch was usually educational. A cartoon show about talking babies would never have crossed her mother's mind. "Besides, I think it was a little after my time."

"Whatever, AARP, you're not that much older than I am." He hit the button firmly. "We're watching. No arguments. I swear, why am I showing you this? Girl, I'm not even Jewish."

She elbowed him. "Oh, shut up and eat your latkes."

He smiled at her as the show started. Sadness still lurked in the corners of his eyes and the lines around his mouth, but the smile looked more real than it had. She scooted into his side, and he relaxed against her.

As they watched and ate and laughed, leaning into each other, the candles in the menorah burned, shedding light on miracles of every kind.

FINIS


End file.
